Publication Type

Journal Article

Version

publishedVersion

Publication Date

10-2005

Abstract

Managers charged with assessing investment opportunities for information technologies such as e-business projects face considerable uncertainty in their decision-making processes. Contemporary theories of the firm and the normative prescriptions thereof emphasize the potential for such investments to augment firm-level knowledge and relational capabilities. However, prior research has not examined the relative emphases that managers place on the knowledge and relational capability-augmenting characteristics of the e-business investments. In this paper, we develop a model to assess whether managerial evaluations of e-business investment opportunities are consistent with these normative and theoretical prescriptions. A test of the model using survey data on 485 project assessments by e-business managers suggests that managerial assessment and choice are guided by the criteria suggested by the knowledge and relational theories in evaluating potential e-business initiatives. Our results demonstrate that the ability of firms to exploit their intangible assets through such investments explicitly enter managerial calculus and provide new insights into the relative importance ascribed to these factors. The overarching insight is that managers ascribe relatively more weight to knowledge-based considerations than to relational considerations.

Keywords

E-business investment opportunities, Internet software, augmenting characteristics, conjoint design, contemporary theories, decision-making processes, emerging technologies, firm-level knowledge, information technologies, knowledge integration, knowledge-based considerations, managerial assessments, normative prescriptions, project assessments, project management, relational capabilities

Discipline

Computer Sciences | Management Information Systems

Research Areas

Information Systems and Management

Publication

IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management

Volume

52

Issue

4

First Page

449

Last Page

460

ISSN

0018-9391

Identifier

10.1109/TEM.2005.856573

Publisher

IEEE

Additional URL

https://doi.org/10.1109/TEM.2005.856573

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